Delegate to The Lowest Level

As you know, as a leader, you should be taking the time to train your replacement. One of the easiest ways to train your replacement is to ensure that you are tasking and delegating activities to those that you have selected in your succession planning as a possible replacement.

“you want me to do this?” photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Exercise your ability to effectively delegate and task activities to the lowest level employees or peers where possible. This gives your team a greater opportunity for growth at the lowest possible cost for the organization.

Additionally, when delegating activities and tasks to your employees and your peers, these individuals that you want to grow, it enriches their experience, it increases their capability, leading to greater engagement, and advances the organization by level loading the team and expanding the capacity of the organization. It develops relationships. You are building a depth chart to lean on for possible shortages due to growth or lean times.

“if you do it this way…” photo by NESA by Makers on Unsplash

What is the difference between delegating and tasking individuals?

To task someone with a particular activity means that you remain as the owner of the outcome and results of that particular activity. You are asking someone to do a particular piece of work or to undertake an activity possibly outside their “normal” working activities. With tasking, you are the owner and you are assigning specific work or duties to help complete that particular activity.

Delegating an activity to someone means that you are abdicating the ownership of those particular activities and they are now the owner of that effort. They are the authorized people to fully represent you and are entrusted with the work and decisions related to that delegation. They now have the responsibility and the consequences from hereafter. They are expected to complete and report on the work as required. They could, in their ability to take on the delegation, could task another to support that effort.

Here are some examples of how to task or delegate activities to members of your team.

Task John with creating collateral and developing an agenda for your meeting. You give John the instruction and guidance of the items you need to be collected for that particular meeting. You may also require that he create an agenda of the topics to be covered within that meeting. John will provide you with that information for use in that meeting. You have the right to modify or delete information provided as needed, as you remain the owner of the detail.

“John is keeping time” photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Within the meeting, John could keep time and ensure the meeting meets the agenda by remaining on time while learning valuable time management skills. He can help collect the notes and details needed for action items as meeting follow-ons/outcomes. You could give John additional guidance in leadership and documentation, by ensuring that people are properly tasked with or noting the activity status of their previous actions. All these efforts help the growth of John and the organization. John remains doing these activities under your guidance.

“Sue running the show” photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

To delegate your activities such as creating a report, your delegate Sue will now become the owner of that activity in its creation, documentation, reporting, and distribution with no ownership or additional guidance from you in that effort.

The delegation is a good way to have her gain experience in the creation of reports, the necessary research and collation of information, the ability to create an effective communication tool for presentation, not to mention the ability to present information to senior leadership in a manner that develops accurate, concise and clear communication skills. Sue could also prepare a series of questions and answers for sharing at the close of the presentation. These activities ensure a functional meeting and the opportunity to learn how to own a particular effort and the results.

As you become better at tasking or delegating efforts and activities to the lowest level provides the best time and value for you and the organization. For instance, you would not necessarily want your senior staff doing the deep dive into the raw data when a lower-level staff member could be collecting and inputting the information into the reports for the same senior level staff.

It would be best for your senior machinist or engineer to put together a list of instructions and guidance for the tooling that needs to be assembled, but then tasking an apprentice to build, assemble and set the tools. It is not the best value to the business with that senior-most machinist assembling tools unless it is absolutely required. 

You would not want your lead engineer to fill out a detailed data spreadsheet. The senior level engineer’s value comes in strategic design, identifying and developing architecture. Utilize, engage and enrich that entry-level engineer by having them investigate where the data comes from, how to get the information, how to develop the spreadsheet and the models that would be generated from the architecture.

You are a leader in your organization because you have learned and developed over the years. You are still a contributor, but your experience gives you greater insight into the information around you, and having the experience and knowledge of where to swing the hammer to fix the issue is your best value. Continuing to shovel coal is not utilizing your experience. Develop and nurture your replacement. Task and delegate like a boss!

Go forth and be brilliant.